Liam arrived at the office earlier than he needed to. The building wasn’t crowded yet, and the elevator ride was quiet enough for him to hear the hum of the cables as it climbed. When the doors opened, the fifth floor still smelled faintly of printer toner and strong coffee. He walked to his desk, set down his bag, and opened the notebook he had brought with him. He wanted to look prepared when the day started for real.

Caleb appeared a few minutes later, holding a mug that looked older than most of the office equipment. “Morning,” he said. “Sleep at all?”

“Enough,” Liam said.

“Good. First full day. We’ll keep it simple. Mitchell briefing at ten-thirty, internal review of the positioning deck at two, and Miranda wants a short outline of your initial take by tomorrow.”

“That soon?”

Caleb shrugged. “She likes momentum. Doesn’t have to be perfect, just clear.”

He sat on the edge of Liam’s desk and pulled up the shared files on Liam’s monitor. “This folder has everything. Research, past campaigns, early notes, client calls. It’s a lot, but don’t try to memorize it. Just get familiar with the shape of it.”

Liam scrolled through the folders, opening a few documents at random. He found market summaries, lists of competitors, sample designs, and meeting transcripts. Each piece added a little more context, but none of it made a full picture yet.

“What’s the client like?” he asked.

“Busy. Direct. A little impatient.” Caleb sipped his coffee. “But they’re not unreasonable. They want something that makes sense for where they are now. The company’s grown fast, but their brand hasn’t kept up. That’s where we come in.”

Liam nodded, scanning a slide showing three bullet points about tone—clear, confident, approachable. Nothing unusual. Most brands thought they needed the same things.

A document caught his eye. “Mitchell Creative Partnership—preliminary notes.” He clicked it open. Inside were a few lines about working with an external design collaborator. He skimmed the text. No specific names. Just mentions of concept refinement, visual development, and schedule alignment.

Caleb leaned over. “That’s from the exploratory talk last month. They’re planning to involve an outside studio for part of the visual work, probably smaller scale. We don’t have the details yet.”

“Do we know which studio?”

“Not yet,” Caleb said. “Miranda said the client will confirm next week. Could be someone local.”

Liam nodded, reading the line again: design collaborator, pending confirmation. It didn’t mean much, but he lingered on it anyway. He thought of the bus stop, of a woman in a gray sweatshirt saying she worked in design. It was a coincidence, most likely. He pushed the idea aside and clicked to the next file.

By mid-morning, the office had filled up. Conversations carried across the open floor, keyboards tapped steadily, and phones buzzed from desks. Liam sat with Caleb in one of the small conference rooms while the rest of the team filtered in.

Miranda arrived last.

“Let’s get started,” she said, setting her tablet on the table. “We need alignment before we move forward.”

She reviewed the goals again—updated messaging, adjusted tone, clearer identity. Then she turned to Liam. “You had a chance to look through the materials?”

“Yes,” he said. “Still working through some of it, but I understand the general direction.”

“Good. Don’t worry about mastering the archive. Focus on what the brand needs now.” She tapped her screen, bringing up a slide. “Caleb will handle the research breakdown. Liam, you’ll support concept development.”

Liam nodded, taking notes. The meeting moved quickly. Questions came from multiple directions, some about research gaps, others about budget. He paid close attention, trying to understand what part he was expected to own. When the meeting wrapped up, Miranda looked directly at him.

“Your outline tomorrow doesn’t need to be long,” she said. “Half a page. Just your early perspective.”

“I can do that,” he said.

“Good.”

She left the room, and Caleb let out a slow breath. “See? Not so bad.”

“Not terrible,” Liam said. “Just fast.”

“This job’s all tempo,” Caleb said. “You’ll adjust.”

They stepped out of the conference room. Liam returned to his desk and spent the next hour going through the rest of the files. The more he read, the more the pieces started to connect. Not fully, but enough for him to see the edges of the picture.

Around noon, he went downstairs to grab lunch. The café on the ground floor was half full. He ordered a sandwich, waited by the counter, and scrolled through his notes. When the food was ready, he carried it back upstairs, sat at his desk, and ate while flipping through the design references the client had sent.

Halfway through the folder, he stopped.

A line in a summary document read: potential collaboration with Ridgeway Design Studio.

He read it twice. He didn’t know the studio. He didn’t know if it was small or big. But something about seeing the word “design” in the context of an external partner made him think again of the conversation that morning.

He told himself not to read too much into it. The city had dozens of studios. Hundreds, maybe. Anything was possible.

He closed the folder and went back to his notes.

At two, the internal review began. This meeting was less formal—Caleb, two others from strategy, and one designer from in-house. They compared drafts, pointed out what felt redundant, and crossed out anything that didn’t fit the tone. Liam contributed where he could, offering a few observations that Caleb said were useful. By the end of the hour, he felt less like an outsider.

When he returned to his desk, there was an email from Miranda reminding him of his outline. A follow-up calendar invite. He wrote a few lines in his notebook, trying to organize his thoughts, and then kept working. The afternoon passed steadily.

At five thirty, people started packing up. Liam shut down his computer, grabbed his bag, and walked out with the crowd heading toward the elevator.

The ride down was quiet. When he stepped onto the street, the air had cooled. He walked to the bus stop, rode back toward his neighborhood, and made the short walk from the stop to his building.

Inside, the stairwell was busier than usual. Someone carried laundry past him. A kid ran up the stairs ahead of his parent. When Liam reached the second floor landing, he saw Zoey locking her door.

She looked over her shoulder when she heard him.

“Oh. Hey,” she said. “Your day go okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “A lot of meetings. A lot of files.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“Yours?”

She adjusted the strap of her bag. “Steady. I had to finish some edits from yesterday. Nothing dramatic.”

He nodded. For a moment, they stood there, neither in a hurry to move on.

“You got your kitchen sorted out yet?” she asked.

“Barely. I found plates, so that’s progress.”

“That counts. Took me three days to locate my forks when I moved in.”

He smiled. “Good to know I’m on schedule then.”

She shifted her weight slightly. “If you ever need to borrow anything—tools, tape, whatever—I probably have it. This building doesn’t come with much.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I might take you up on that.”

“Anytime.”

She stepped past him toward the stairs. He turned to head up to his floor.

“Oh—by the way,” she said from halfway down the steps. “If the lights flicker in the hallway, that’s normal too.”

“I’ll add it to the list.”

She lifted a hand in a small wave and disappeared around the corner. Liam continued up to his apartment.

Inside, the place looked exactly as he’d left it, but it didn’t bother him as much. He changed into a clean shirt, sat at his desk, and opened his notebook. He wrote out a few more thoughts about the Mitchell project, revising sentences and crossing out ones that didn’t fit. As he worked, his mind drifted briefly—not to the apartment, not to the move, but to the quiet conversation on the landing.

He stopped, set his pen down, and leaned back slightly.

The city was bigger than him, bigger than his job, bigger than the building they both lived in. Nothing said their paths had to cross again.

But when he started writing again, the lines came easier.

He worked until the page felt organized enough for tomorrow, then closed the notebook and set it aside. After a moment, he opened the box labeled BATHROOM, took out a set of towels, and hung them where they belonged.

It wasn’t much, but it made the room feel a little more like somewhere he meant to stay.